A pattern

[Slawbug]

But together, they complement each other and form a team that is greater than the sum of their strengths.

STANLEY (raising his arm into the air):

Male!

 

ROSE (raising her arm into the air):

Female!

 

FLYING MAN (entering from above):

Your powers combined, I am Captain Gender Binary!

 

STANLEY and ROSE:

Goooooooo Binary!

 

CAPTAIN GENDER BINARY:

Time to show these binary polluters how gender roles are performed!

(does some barrel rolls while flying)

 

 

So I'm not allowed to qualify my use of the phrase to angle its meaning towards a character that would learn and grow? How is anything to be discussed if we can't add to the meaning of given concepts?

 

There are so many other good things to debate here besides a perceived misuse of language.

 

Clarifying language use is really helpful when you're having a debate; otherwise it's very hard for people coming at the debate from different perspectives and different assumptions to really connect with what the other people are saying.

 

If you don't find it interesting, that's legit; the way to avoid spending time discussing it is to just drop the issue then and use the same language that other people do with minimal fuss.

 

It's also perfectly legit to say, at times, "I think it's more helpful to use this sort of language here, because X" and have a discussion about it. You may not find such discussions interesting, but other people do; if you don't like them, don't participate; but you not liking them is not a reason to make them off-limits.

 

What bugs me more, though, is responding to another person's comments about what words mean by insisting on using your own meaning no matter how much it differs from standard use... but simultaneously, calling foul on somebody else because they have an opinion about how we use those words.

[Dikiyoba]

Oh, Diki. So strict about semantics. So I'm not allowed to qualify my use of the phrase to angle its meaning towards a character that would learn and grow? How is anything to be discussed if we can't add to the meaning of given concepts?

 

If the Rapunzel in Tangled is not a damsel in distress character, what is she?

 

Really Diki all I want is an honest discussion. There are so many other good things to debate here besides a perceived misuse of language.

Pretty much what Slarty said. It's impossible to have a good debate unless people are debating the same things. That requires clear communication, and two components of clear communication are using well-defined terms and explaining things in a precise, thorough way.

 

Dikiyoba has never seen Tangled and does not know what sort of character Rapunzel is. She might be a damsel in distress, or she might not be. Being a damsel in distress doesn't prevent Rapunzel from also being a character who exhibits character growth. It's just that almost all protagonists and most major characters with any number of other characteristics in any genre exhibit character growth. Character growth is one of the basic components of any story. It's like saying that Tangled or Twilight or any other example is popular and relevant because it has dialogue or a plot. They do, but so do all the unpopular stories, or stories in completely different genres that target completely different audiences. It's not a valid distinction.

[Balladeer]

What bugs me more, though, is responding to another person's comments about what words mean by insisting on using your own meaning no matter how much it differs from standard use... but simultaneously, calling foul on somebody else because they have an opinion about how we use those words.

 

That's not what I did Slarty. I never insisted that Diki's definition is not correct - it clearly is, I was just pointing out that insisting on restricting its use to purely trope definition is ridiculous. I would expect an argument about semantics if I had not tried to explain it but I DID say what I meant by it. Diki's response to it basically said my qualification didn't count because it didn't follow the trope and therefore my use of it was incorrect. "If that's not the trope you want to discuss, don't use that phrase!"~Dikiyoba

 

That is not a discussion. That is shutting someone down. As a FYT, it would scream "Shut up!"

[Slawbug]

Well, I see things pretty differently I guess. You KNOW I love you Jewels, but I honestly don't understand where this angry conflict is coming from.

[Dikiyoba]

Oh, I see what you are getting at. You aren't implying that all damsels in distress experience character growth as a characteristic of the trope, but that the subset of characters who are both damsels in distress and fleshed out enough to experience character growth (so that by the end of the story they are no longer damsels in distress?) is interesting to certain audiences. Is that right?

 

If so, Dikiyoba doesn't get it, but Dikiyoba can't argue against it.

[Lilith]

It's just that almost all protagonists and most major characters with any number of other characteristics in any genre exhibit character growth.

 

i dunno if i'd say any genre. for one thing i think there's a certain strain of comedy that's founded on a lack of character growth. think seinfeld: "no hugging, no learning". or the simpsons, or it's always sunny in philadelphia, or...

[Balladeer]

Not anger, Slarty. Indignation that it is so difficult for honest discussion to be considered valid.

[Slawbug]

Challenging the accuracy of a point of honest discussion is exactly what you do in a debate, though. Anyway, nobody said your posts were invalid, they just disagreed with them -- and in particular they disagreed with a detail that you apparently thought was off-limits to disagreement.

[Balladeer]

Oh, I see what you are getting at. You aren't implying that all damsels in distress experience character growth as a characteristic of the trope, but that the subset of characters who are both damsels in distress and fleshed out enough to experience character growth (so that by the end of the story they are no longer damsels in distress?) is interesting to certain audiences. Is that right?

 

It was meant to be a tie in to the original post for why these vulnerable and often ignorant female characters - with their supporting knowledgeable male characters - are so popular in the stories. (And perhaps that is where we got mixed up, my using the 'damsel in distress' phrase to try to also include the female characters meant my the original post instead of just referencing the OP.) But it's a popular theme to write because it SELLS.

[Harehunter]

Well met Slarty, Long time since we got into a head to head. Although I'm not sure if your response to my post is sarcasm, it matters not.

As for misinterpretation, or worse, misuse of a word, I debate that continuously on Linked In.

 

I don't need that here, This forum is to relax, not to get all worked up over nothing. I have noticed a bit of edginess here, though. It is as though some people are expecting to be slighted. That was the past, this is rte present. Let's look toward a better future than what we had in the past. That process begins in the present.

[Harehunter]

And while I still do not understand bender neutral, I will do my best to avoid offending; However, I cannot guarantee that I won't slip up, Ok, Please understand that I do not, nor ever will, do so with intent to offend.

[VCH]

What about the "Worst Witch" book series and TV series? The main character seemed pretty gangster in that one, although the majority of the characters where female, so maybe it doesn't count?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Worst_Witch

[Student of Trinity]

PIt's impossible to have a good debate unless people are debating the same things.

Maybe this is the problem, Dikiyoba. I hate debates, and have no interest in them. I haven't much interest in any ideas that are really well defined, because by the time they really are well defined, there's not much left to say. I'm a dyed-in-the-wool ivory tower academic with very few strong opinions about anything, and even fewer opinions that I believe every reasonable person should share. The constant battle, however, is to clarify vague ideas, and I'm interested in discussions that do this. Trading extreme statements back and forth is one good way to do this, and I can see how it can be mistaken for the 'clash' of debate; but that's not at all the point.

 

Offer a bold hypothesis; start 'er up, and see why she don't go. If something pops, then rejigger things, and try again. This isn't devious goalpost shifting as an underhanded tactic for winning debates. It's not a debate, and there's nothing to win. It's exploring ideas. Debating is futile — I've literally never seen it accomplish anything — but this kind of violent discussion is often extremely fruitful. By all means shoot down my proposals, but 'goalpost shifting' is an irrelevant charge. I am trying to pin down some vague ideas. Shifting the goalposts is the goal.

 

Concerning Harry Potter characters, though, I really don't see your complaint even in debating terms. I said there were no memorable and original female characters; I later clarified this to mean, memorable and original to the degree that Snape and Dumbledore and so on are. That's hardly a devious shift. Every character is memorable to some degree, but there are only a handful of characters that can hang out with Sherlock Holmes and Long John Silver. It's a fuzzy line, but it clearly exists. You cited a bunch of online lists that beautifully demonstrated my point: plenty of female also-rans, and an overwhelmingly male top end. In making this out to be some kind of devious shiftiness on my part, it is you who seem to me to be deviously shifting.

[Student of Trinity]

Hmm. I'm not sure I follow why Hermione doesn't count. I feel like you're being much harder on her than on some of the male characters you gave a pass to, like Voldemort, who for almost all of the series is an extremely generic Big Bad.

I'm not condemning her to prison. I'm saying she's ordinary, where the male characters are extraordinary. I think this is partly Rowling's failure, because Hermione's intelligence and talent seem as though they could have been made much more extraordinary. She could for instance have precociously mastered some really advanced magic, something that really shifted the plot. Instead she's mainly a convenient source of footnotes, filling the reader in on background info that Ron and Harry haven't bothered to learn. So in a sense I'll concede a sort of phantom extraordinary character, the Hermione Granger that Could Have Been. The one we actually got is a pretty normal person, in a world of much wilder characters. I'm not saying that's bad. I'm just saying that.

 

That's a fair point about Voldemort; or so I thought, when I first read your post. I realized that most if not all of the depth of his character only comes from how he got to be the Big Bad — namely, that he deliberately made himself that way. But then I also realized, that starts to come out already in Book 2. And even in Book 1, Voldemort is a face on the back of somebody else's head. That's not exactly ho-hum, you know. It's pretty memorable and extraordinary.

 

I don't know if it's worth arguing this; but I'd find it helpful if you'd articulate what criteria you're using to make the lists in a way that does not depend on the enumerated characters for definition. Then we can easily debate the suitability of the criteria, and we can also easily debate which characters we think best fit it. As is it's kind of all in a soup, and since each of those two debates affects the other, it's hard to argue about either one in soup-form.

I don't want to stop anyone from ranking Harry Potter characters if they want, but my own interest is in the hypothesis that there's a pattern in popular books for young adults, that male characters are extraordinary while female characters are ordinary. So far I'm not feeling it very necessary to define 'extraordinary' very precisely, because there seem to be so many extreme examples in which the application is obvious.

[Øther]

I'm not condemning her to prison. I'm saying she's ordinary, where the male characters are extraordinary.

While I will agree that Hermione could have been so much more, and just about none of her potential was really utilized, so do wish to point out that not all of the male characters are extraordinary. Sirius seems like a cool guy, and Dumbledore was strong and whatnot, but I personally didn't see many examples of extraordinary. In fact, a large amount of the people in the series just seems largely incompetent. I find it amusing that the only Horcrux Harry actually destroyed was the diary, and that despite his super important scavenger hunt to save the world, he contributed surprisingly little. I was really disappointed how Voldy was taken care of, though. Unintentional suicide? Endings like that just kinda leave a bad taste in my mouth. The hero goes through his long journey of self discovery, and the Big Bad is built up to be basically magical Hitler, and then when they finally get down to business, the guy kills himself. *cough*Eragon*cough*

 

I will admit, however, busting out of the bank of a dragon did score Harry a few points.

[Slawbug]

I'm not condemning her to prison. I'm saying she's ordinary, where the male characters are extraordinary.

I still don't see what makes her ordinary that doesn't apply to the male characters; or what makes them extraordinary that doesn't apply to her.

 

I don't know if it's worth arguing this; but I'd find it helpful if you'd articulate what criteria you're using to make the lists in a way that does not depend on the enumerated characters for definition. Then we can easily debate the suitability of the criteria, and we can also easily debate which characters we think best fit it. As is it's kind of all in a soup, and since each of those two debates affects the other, it's hard to argue about either one in soup-form.

I don't want to stop anyone from ranking Harry Potter characters if they want, but my own interest is in the hypothesis that there's a pattern in popular books for young adults, that male characters are extraordinary while female characters are ordinary. So far I'm not feeling it very necessary to define 'extraordinary' very precisely, because there seem to be so many extreme examples in which the application is obvious.

It doesn't seem to be obvious, though, because most of the rest of the thread is disagreeing with you, at least about Hermione.

 

You can call it "debating" or "discussing" or "postulating"; a rose by any other name; we all know that the goal is not to "win" but rather to suss out what fits and what doesn't and build a more complex and nuanced understanding, together.

 

I'm not asking for black-and-white rubric; I'm not asking to study literature like entomology and remove all the magic, the greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts, etc. I'm just asking for SOME indication of what you mean by extraordinary, put in its own terms. The application is NOT obvious -- this is clear, because we disagree about the application!

 

I don't understand how you mean to "explore ideas" in a positive sort of "violent discussion" when you aren't actually willing to discuss the ideas you bring up with any language, any method, any perspective except your own. I don't understand how you expect other people to be a part of said exploration and discussion if you won't engage in the process of clarifying your ideas. When most everyone seems to disagree and you're asked for help in better understanding the ideas you put forward, and you say "I'm not feeling it very necessary to define (whatever term) very precisely, because there seem to be so many extreme examples in which the application is obvious" --

 

That's not exploring. That's not discussing. That's having a conversation with yourself, and thinking that other people are going to enjoy listening to it.

[Balladeer]

I'm saying she's ordinary, where the male characters are extraordinary.

 

Running with Harry is anything but ordinary. Magic from a Muggle family? So not ordinary. Using an amulet to be in two places at once and really twist up the plot? I'd call that pretty extraordinary. Where is your bar that she must reach before she becomes interesting to you? And perhaps that is her downfall, in your eyes she is not interesting but I would not consider that an opinion of the majority.

 

I will nod at your complaint, though, for Hermione being the only one. I can't say that there are any other female characters in Harry Potter that stand out to me except maybe that one teacher one that I can't quite remember the name of. She did some... stuff that I can't quite remember. Which knocks her back down to barely more than ordinary.

[Triumph]

I actually really appreciate SoT's critique of "debate" and agree that a mutual, cooperative, truth-seeking effort tends to much more productive than proper "debate" where the parties start out already committed to positions and there's an adversarial quality to the proceedings.

 

However, meaningful communication requires requires that terms have common meanings. If you speak German and I don't, you can say all sorts of great stuff in that language and it's effectively meaningless to me. We're all communicating in the same language here (i.e. written English), but it's still essential define terms. Most words have a range of meaning. Different people using the same word(s) to mean different things is a path to confusion and futility.

 

However clear and obvious something is to you, SoT, the consensus of other people posting in the thread is that stuff you're saying is NOT clear and obvious. Something I've observed in my time in academia is that one can NEVER express one's point in "too obvious" a way, or NEVER be "too clear" with framing one's thesis. There will always be readers who miss your thesis statement no matter how blatantly obvious you think it is or how many times you repeat it throughout the book. And I am continually, ah, "impressed" by what students manage to misunderstand about my lectures or readings I assign; I can always strive for greater clarity.

 

Turning from philosophy for a moment: arguably, every single wizard/witch character in the Harry Potter stories is "extraordinary" by our standards simply because they CAN DO MAGIC and none of us can. Given the absence of such powers in our world, any one of them could rightfully be called "extraordinary." If we wish to parse out an additional tier of "extraordinariness," we will need a measure or standard that is at least marginally more precise than "wild," "not exactly ho-hum," "memorable," and "original," to use a few expressions you've invoked. Some of those are very subjective terms (e.g. who's to say what characters are most memorable from one person to another???) and others mean rather different things (e.g. "wild" and "original" could overlap, but they also have some very different meanings).

 

Anyway, rather than suggest others are "deviously shifting," interpret their quibbles and questions charitably - as genuine confusion - and give us a little more definition. The definition won't be set in stone (it can always be revised), but we your interlocutors need a little more to go on in order to make this discussion work.

[Dikiyoba]

I hate debates, and have no interest in them.

Then stop generating and participating in debates?

 

By all means shoot down my proposals, but 'goalpost shifting' is an irrelevant charge. I am trying to pin down some vague ideas. Shifting the goalposts is the goal.

Then announce when your original proposal has been met and that you have a new goal in mind, and describe all your goals clearly! If you aren't trying to win a debate, then don't use methods that encourage confusion and derailment rather than clear communication. Your behavior runs counter to your stated intentions.

 

I really don't see your complaint even in debating terms. I said there were no memorable and original female characters; I later clarified this to mean, memorable and original to the degree that Snape and Dumbledore and so on are.

Your "and so on" includes Hagrid and Voldemort, who are also "also-rans" in the lists I posted, and are consistently ranked near Luna and Bellatrix, as well as being ranked significantly lower than Hermione. It's important to note that Luna and Bellatrix don't even show up until the second half of the series, unlike Hagrid and Voldemort who show up at the very beginning.

 

Dikiyoba.

[Goldengirl]

Concerning Harry Potter characters, though, I really don't see your complaint even in debating terms. I said there were no memorable and original female characters; I later clarified this to mean, memorable and original to the degree that Snape and Dumbledore and so on are. That's hardly a devious shift. Every character is memorable to some degree, but there are only a handful of characters that can hang out with Sherlock Holmes and Long John Silver. It's a fuzzy line, but it clearly exists. You cited a bunch of online lists that beautifully demonstrated my point: plenty of female also-rans, and an overwhelmingly male top end. In making this out to be some kind of devious shiftiness on my part, it is you who seem to me to be deviously shifting.

 

I think the problem is that everyone up to know has measured Hermione on other people's terms. Her capability with magic, her fount of knowledge, etc. These are areas where she excels, but they're all too common. She's not the greatest witch in terms of ability; McGonagoll and Lestrange both could probably overcome her in technique or prowess. True, with time, Hermione would probably be the best witch of her time, and not just of her generation. However, that's not the case.

 

In her own terms, though, Hermione is extraordinary. We see the seeds of this germinate in the first and second books when Hermione is intentionally kind to Neville and takes major offense to Draco calling her a "Mudblood." It's not until she starts the unfortunately named SPEW (Society for the Prevention of Elvish Welfare) that it becomes severely obvious that Hermione is the only true social justice advocate in the corrupt Wizarding world. Even progressive heroes such as Dumbledore only care about the blood quantum issue, leaving the mistreating of goblins and elves under the rug. Not to deride Dumbledore, who did advocate for the centaurs, but that's the only place he shines. Hermione is the leader of a new generation of socially conscious magical folk.

[Slawbug]

I think there's a false dichotomy being set up here between "debates" and "mutual, co-operative, truth-seeking efforts." I'm certainly not "committed" to a particular perspective, and I doubt that anyone here is posting just "to win" rather than out of interest in the topic. Debating the merits of a particular idea or theory or piece of evidence, when there are multiple plausible interpretations, would seem to me to be a legitimate, valuable part of said truth-seeking efforts.

 

I do think there is an adversarial element that comes in, but I think that comes in AFTER the truth-seeking effort begins. It's not something anyone is bringing with them to the table. Rather, it bubbles up because we apparently have different expectations about what the general rules should be for a mutual, co-operative truth-seeking effort. This thread has turned adversarial explicitly, and only, as far as I can tell, around the issue of clarifying meaning and whether or not that's a good use of time. In the English department thread, we had a similar issue around the issue of describing opposing points of view charitably versus with pejoratives. These conflicts lead to people feeling like somebody else has "broken the rules" and isn't playing fair; sometimes they lead to people feeling attacked and defensive, as well.

 

I don't think these are subjective questions. I think there is an answer that helps the truth-seeking effort and an answer that destroys it. Nonetheless, given the recurring disagreements, I think we should address these questions and agree on how we will approach them before engaging in any more such co-operative efforts, if we want to keep them co-operative.

 

(Also, @Harehunter, whose post I missed this morning: well met!)

[Dikiyoba]

In her own terms, though, Hermione is extraordinary. We see the seeds of this germinate in the first and second books when Hermione is intentionally kind to Neville and takes major offense to Draco calling her a "Mudblood." It's not until she starts the unfortunately named SPEW (Society for the Prevention of Elvish Welfare) that it becomes severely obvious that Hermione is the only true social justice advocate in the corrupt Wizarding world. Even progressive heroes such as Dumbledore only care about the blood quantum issue, leaving the mistreating of goblins and elves under the rug. Not to deride Dumbledore, who did advocate for the centaurs, but that's the only place he shines. Hermione is the leader of a new generation of socially conscious magical folk.

Wasn't it Ron who took major offense to Draco calling Hermione a mudblood, while Hermione's reaction was more restrained? (I don't remember how she reacted, actually.)

 

Dumbledore did allow a werewolf to be educated and then become a teacher at Hogwarts, unlike most wizards who fear and hate werewolves.

 

Dikiyoba is conflicted on Dumbledore's characterization. For the first third the series, he's mostly a wise, benevolent, fairly generic leader. He becomes more interesting in the middle of the series, when he is actively challenging both Voldemort and the Ministry of Magic and apologizing to Harry for the mistakes he's made. For the final third of the series, his characterization is a bit of a mess of mistakes and overcomplicated machinations (kind of like the entire plot of those last two books) that Dikiyoba doesn't remember very well. Then you add Rowling's announcement that he is supposedly gay even though she didn't bother to write it into the series which is all about the power of love and focuses heavily on romantic relationships. And then you realize that despite his supposed kindness, he allows Harry to be abused repeatedly by the Dursleys and by Snape,

Edited April 11, 2014 by Dikiyoba

[Sudanna]

There are enough hints in the books, specifically about Dumbledore's history with Grindelwald (Which also, incidentally, provides good reasons why it simply wouldn't come up), that Rowling revealing that he's gay is convincingly not an asspull.

[keira]

why does it matter if dumbledore is gay

 

what does it add to the story

 

how does that change his character in any way whatsoever

[Sudanna]

Well, if you mean in a direct sense, it rather depends on how the wizarding world treats sexuality, which I don't think is ever addressed. To any specific reader, the sexuality of a character can mean whatever that means to them. I like Dumbledore being gay because there's a ton of implications about horrible things happening between him and Grindelwald, and it's pretty interesting to think of Dumbledore as someone who killed his dark wizard lover in his youth.

[Dikiyoba]

why does it matter if dumbledore is gay

 

what does it add to the story

 

how does that change his character in any way whatsoever

Pretty much what Nalyd said. If he's gay, bi, pan, or otherwise romantically interested in men, then Dumbledore's relationship with Grindelwald is drastically different than if he is heterosexual, asexual, or otherwise not romantically interested in men.

 

But all we can do is speculate, because Rowling doesn't tell us until after the fact. The series is about love and equality and relationships and discrimination, but she doesn't tell us anything about how the wizarding world views sexual orientations. She writes frankly (though avoiding direct references to sex) about all sorts of heterosexual relationships and families, from the ideal to the seriously messed up, without ever including a same-gender pairing or non-heterosexual character until we get one after-the-fact token gay character. That's a pretty glaring absence.

 

---

 

Jumping back to the very first post, Warrior Cats is a popular series that initially starts out with female mentors: Bluestar, Yellowfang, and Cinderpelt. Then the viewpoint character cast expands until there's no room for a protagonist-mentor dynamic. It's aimed at preteens rather than teenagers, though, with (at least initially) more male protagonists/viewpoint characters than female ones. And although the series starts off strongly, the quality of writing erodes quickly. Then again, quality matters much less to most people than it does to Dikiyoba, and it remains dramatic and fun to read for much longer than it remains well-written.

[Sudanna]

She writes frankly (though avoiding direct references to sex) about all sorts of heterosexual relationships and families, from the ideal to the seriously messed up, without ever including a same-gender pairing or non-heterosexual character until we get one after-the-fact token gay character. That's a pretty glaring absence.

 

I dunno if it's all that glaring. The circle of people whose personal relationships we get really into isn't all that great. It's entirely plausible it just hadn't come up.

[Edgwyn]

Going back to the original post, the books that SoT is referencing are essentially the trashy romance novels of the fantasy world. If you are concerned about what your daughter is getting out of the trashy romance novel genre, then find some fantasy or SF or literature or anything else that is not in the trashy romance genre. While there are plenty of fantasy and SF novels with female characters who are just there for romantic interests, there are many more, especially the more modern ones that have strong female and male characters. On the other hand, plenty of successful people like trashy romance novels and the best way to get your daughter to read more of them is to tell her she can't.

[VCH]

This debate—it is a debate— is quite interesting. I don't have the pateince two write as much as you people do, but I will also point out that there are definently books with very strong female characters... classics even.

 

For example, Anna Karenina.

 

The original post was about new books and movies, I guess, but anyway...

[adc.]

Oh no.

 

 

You must give the snow elf guy some elven arrows to get this. The only way to defeat Harkon though.

[Slawbug]

I've split off the side discussion in this thread. You can find it here.

[Balladeer]

Going back to the original post, the books that SoT is referencing are essentially the trashy romance novels of the fantasy world.

I would definitely disagree with the qualification of these works as 'trashy romance'. Fantasy that contains romantic themes, yes. But trashy? Its a word of rhetoric likely influenced by your opinion of romantic themes in general. I would reserve the use of trashy to describe the type of romance that gets explicit, but it would still be rhetoric on my part.

 

While there are plenty of fantasy and SF novels with female characters who are just there for romantic interests, there are many more, especially the more modern ones that have strong female and male characters.

Specific examples, please?

[Edgwyn]

Sticking to fantasy and ignoring SF: Among the older books, The Darkover series by Marion Zimmer Bradley and the Dragon Riders of Pern series by Anne McCafferty, (though some consider them SF, I do not). For more modern examples: David Drake's Lord of the Isles and Elements series; Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time; Melanie Rawn's dragon series (but it has been a long time since I have read it so I may be mistaken); the later books in David Weber's War God series. For younger readers, the Percy Jackson series and its spinoffs is fairly well balanced.

 

I haven't read them (I'm not into the various vampire series), but the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series has a female protagonist just because there were few out there. There are currently 21 books in the series, so it is certainly successful.

[Lilith]

Dragon Riders of Pern series by Anne McCafferty,

 

i'm not sure if i would wholeheartedly recommend these tbh, the author has some Issues with gender and sexuality

 

I haven't read them (I'm not into the various vampire series), but the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series has a female protagonist just because there were few out there. There are currently 21 books in the series, so it is certainly successful.

 

uh you know that after the first few books that series basically becomes a porno right

[Dikiyoba]

Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time;

Uh... the Wheel of Time's female characters are really bad.

 

Anyway, The Sharing Knife series by Lois McMaster Bujold might be a good choice for anyone who likes the combination of fantasy and romance. Dikiyoba hasn't read it, but the books Dikiyoba has read by Bujold were good. Anyone have more information on the series?

[Randomizer]

Women writers tend to be more willing to have women protagonists.

 

C. J. Cherryh's Morgaine series has the start with Morgaine learning of her origin and powers in the first book before going into mostly her as the main character. As a woman, she does have some strong female characters, but they could easily be written as men without changing most plots.

 

C. L. Moore's Jirel of Joiry for some short stories but the first has some adult themes that some might find disturbing.

 

Although some men do create strong women characters.

 

Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and Grey Mouser books have some strong women characters, but it mostly concentrates on the the men as the protagonists, since as thieves calling them heroes all the time is a stretch. Most of the time the women are there as girlfriends with a few times to one up the men.

 

Joel Rosenberg's Guardians of the Flame series has strong women characters even if most of the books center on the men. Andrea and Doria are rarely damsels in distress.

[Edgwyn]

Most of CJ Cherryh's and Andre Norton's books were written at a time when publishers discouraged authors from having female protagonists. And so despite the fact that they are both female, most of their characters are male. I did not mention Mercedes Lackey for essentially the same reason, though she wrote later she had very few female characters. In terms of the Dragonriders series, while there is certainly a lack of diversity of sexual orientation, I am unaware of her personal beliefs. Of course I mentioned the Darkover books and I do have issues with MZB's alleged real life tolerance of Pedophilia.

 

In terms of WoT, I do not think that the female characters are any worse than the male characters. And the female characters do grow and change and have female mentors which was one of the complaints at the start of this thread.

[Student of Trinity]

Anyway, The Sharing Knife series by Lois McMaster Bujold might be a good choice for anyone who likes the combination of fantasy and romance. Dikiyoba hasn't read it, but the books Dikiyoba has read by Bujold were good. Anyone have more information on the series?

 

Yes; I've read it and liked it quite a lot. It's been a few years, but a few things still stick out about it, including a really unusual bit in one book where the climactic confrontation with the long-pursued bad guy is abruptly short-circuited. The good guy has an overpowered tactic that should just end the fight in a second, but I was expecting the author to write around this awkwardness somehow, and drag things out for drama. Nope: he ends the fight in a second, and the story deals with the aftermath.

 

It's a series with two major characters. An ordinary young woman, who seems to be distinctive in generally being nice, and in being peculiarly attractive to the older male protagonist, who has supernatural powers and a long tragic backstory of heroic struggle against ghastly evil.

 

I hadn't thought of this series before as part of my pattern, but it clearly is.

[Slawbug]

I guess this means we're not getting any clarification on the criteria, after all.

[Balladeer]

Anyway, The Sharing Knife series by Lois McMaster Bujold might be a good choice for anyone who likes the combination of fantasy and romance. Dikiyoba hasn't read it, but the books Dikiyoba has read by Bujold were good. Anyone have more information on the series?

 

LOVED The Sharing Knife series. Though they stick with the original complaint that the female protagonist starts out ignorant while the male protagonist knows significantly more and has to teach her. But the other female characters do start out strong and knowledgeable (if a bit emotionally unstable). It's more of a cultural divide that the main female must cross over.

[Kelandon]

It's a series with two major characters. An ordinary young woman, who seems to be distinctive in generally being nice, and in being peculiarly attractive to the older male protagonist, who has supernatural powers and a long tragic backstory of heroic struggle against ghastly evil.

 

I hadn't thought of this series before as part of my pattern, but it clearly is.

I mean, once you go to this description (younger woman, older man), it may just be that books are reflecting life, and it's more common for opposite-sex couples to have an older man and a younger woman than vice-versa. (Those statistics show that the median age difference for opposite-sex married couples in the U.S. is that the man is 2-3 years older than the woman.)

 

Why this is, I don't pretend to know, but it is true.

 

(This made me wonder about same-sex couples, which is not relevant to the topic of discussion at all, but I was curious. Googling turned up that in Australia, there are larger age differences between same-sex couples than between opposite-sex couples. I wonder why that is... I have no clue.)

[Randomizer]

I read an article in a Jewish monthly paper that explained that Jewish men leaving school usually spent a few years getting established in a job before considering getting married. The interest in being financially stable or at least the prospect of it happening after debts were paid might account for it in some cases.

 

In fantasy literature it's more like the older male has spent time getting used to his powers and less with romantic entanglements. Although there are stories where the male has a doomed romance at an earlier age caused by not being in control of his powers. This usually leads to a quest to regain control. The Wheel of Time series has that with Rand where he has to control his powers even if it's about a year.

[Dikiyoba]

In terms of WoT, I do not think that the female characters are any worse than the male characters. And the female characters do grow and change and have female mentors which was one of the complaints at the start of this thread.

 

That's somewhat true, the male characters are also pretty awful. But the female characters are definitely worse. The male characters don't spend time obsessing over their clothing, or getting naked to perform magic rituals.

 

---

 

I read an article in a Jewish monthly paper that explained that Jewish men leaving school usually spent a few years getting established in a job before considering getting married. The interest in being financially stable or at least the prospect of it happening after debts were paid might account for it in some cases.

 

Don't most college graduates do that, though? So that doesn't explain the age gap, because there are large numbers of women and men with college degrees. Besides, a lot of those graduates find long-term relationships before graduating and just wait until after college to get married.

 

Anyway, realism is kind of a silly excuse in the fantasy-romance genre when there are other factors going on, like very unequal ages and levels of ability. Realistic fantasy relationships are like those found in Harry Potter, when there's a bunch of people of roughly equal ages and abilities getting into relationships with each other. Novels like Twilight, for instance, feature things like a 100 year-old vampire falling in love with a ordinary 17 year-old human. (Or a twenty-something werewolf falling in love with a vampire-human baby, for that matter)

 

Dikiyoba.

[Mistah Q]

I have conflicting feelings on the after-the-fact reveal (of Dumbledore being gay). On one hand it could seem like she wrote about all the various relationships but forgot to be inclusive and realized later then tacked it on after the fact. On the other hand you could say, her point was that Dumbledore was gay but his sexuality had no bearing on what kind of man he was and that was her point, so in that way it's a victory that it was never explicitly said. The only trouble with that is that some of the other characters, their romantic relationships did matter and even define them. The difference does put an extremely different light on his young past so the detail wouldn't have been entirely superfluous.

 

At the end of the day I won't nitpick about it I guess.

[Kelandon]

Don't most college graduates do that, though? So that doesn't explain the age gap, because there are large numbers of women and men with college degrees.

More to the point, more women than men graduate college, so if the need to be financially stable were impacting men and women equally, one would expect women to wait longer than men to get married (especially given that women earn less, on average — a trend which, if I remember correctly, applies to female college graduates as well as females in general).

[Jerakeen]

Is the heterosexual marriage age gap really that mysterious? Or does no one want to mention the obvious biological basis for it.

 

I know it's gauche to suggest that human behaviour is in any way influenced by our evolutionary history, but I think it's fair to say that a woman is less likely to be put off by a few grey hairs on a man's head than vice versa.

[Edgwyn]

I certainly think what Jerakeen says is true for the hetero portion of most Western cultures. The other aspect of biology besides appearance is fertility. Men are fertile longer than women. One could even argue if so inclined that the evolutionary imperative favors the young nubile female capturing the successful established male just like in most of the books we are all complaining about. A relationship between equals is a very recent thing in Western Cultures (and still not a thing in a lot of other cultures).

 

The more women graduate from college then men trend is a fairly new trend and will take time to impact marriage ages and still has to contend with biology and psychology. The other factor that will no doubt stir a lively debate is that many people believe that Women are emotionally mature sooner than men are, therefore men need to be a little older.

 

Many high school and college age relationships are age appropriate, like in Harry Potter. A lot of fantasy works tend to thrust relatively young heroes or heroines into an adult society instead of having them in a school setting with their peers.

 

As to clothes obsession in WoT, Mat was at least as clothes obsessed as the female characters were, probably more so. There was a lot more female nudity than male nudity, though not as much as you imply. It was mostly in a ritual to prove that a person was biologically female and in the Sauna, not for the casting of spells.

[Kelandon]

Is the heterosexual marriage age gap really that mysterious? Or does no one want to mention the obvious biological basis for it.

 

I know it's gauche to suggest that human behaviour is in any way influenced by our evolutionary history, but I think it's fair to say that a woman is less likely to be put off by a few grey hairs on a man's head than vice versa.

I didn't say that it was mysterious. I just said that I don't pretend to know why it is. Presumably it's some combination of biological factors — girls mature faster than boys, men are able to have children until an older age than women, etc. — and sociological factors, but I don't know biology or sociology terribly well, so I don't claim to have any particular handle on causative factors here.

 

(The same-sex age gap is actually mysterious to me. I have no idea what that's about.)

[Slawbug]

I can think of a large number of *possible* contributing factors to the same-sex age gap.

 

* Some large portion of heterosexual couples do partake, both in their formation and maintenance, of power discrepancies that align with standard gender roles. If you're drawn to that kind of surface-characteristic-related power-gradient, and you aren't going to get it from gender, age seems like the next most readily accessible option.

* Many heterosexual couples meet in contexts in which there are existing social structures and tendencies, that result in meeting lots of people of similar ages. The number of same sex couples who meet in such contexts is probably dramatically smaller.

* A fairly large portion of long term heterosexual couples form during common mate-finding periods in their life cycle, such as college or the early 20's. Although this is not true of all straight couples, same-sex couplers are far less likely to be aligned with these "default societal paradigms" as far as their love lives go, for a slew of reasons.

* Many people feel taboos around big age differences with dating. People looking for a same sex couple have already broken at least one taboo -- and until recently, it often seemed like an ubiquitous taboo. So, perhaps they are likely to be less concerned on average with flouting socially-imposed taboos around partner choice.

* Possibly, biological factors. It would be especially interesting to see if results were different for same-sex couples of different genders.

 

I think there are more, too. Just based on my own anecdotal observations, I'm inclined to give the most weight to the first factor I mentioned.

[Lilith]

* Some large portion of heterosexual couples do partake, both in their formation and maintenance, of power discrepancies that align with standard gender roles. If you're drawn to that kind of surface-characteristic-related power-gradient, and you aren't going to get it from gender, age seems like the next most readily accessible option.

 

well i mean there's also height or career or general social demeanour/presentation (butch/femme for lesbians, plus whatever social dynamics gay dudes have that you probably know better than i do)

 

although i guess career status is also going to be related to age